Hulu Plus hits 2 million subscribers, seeing 500,000 new members in Q1

Hulu is set to announce a 25% subscription growth in its online TV service at an event in NYC this week, as it looks to tempt advertisers on board to drive its revenue.

Founded in 2007, Hulu is an online TV service that helps users discover premium content from around the world. Its ownership is shared between Hulu, NBCUniversal, NewsCorporation, The Walt Disney Company and Providence Equity Partners.

It also runs Hulu Plus, a subscription-based service that operates across a range of dedicated apps for mobile devices and consoles such as the Nintendo Wii. And it seems that this specific content conduit is proving fruitful for the company, as it prepares to officially announce that it has now passed two million subscribers to the $8m-a-month service.

As The New York Times reports, Hulu is scheduled to give a presentation this Thursday in New York, where it will pitch advertisers with its original programming, and it’s expected to announce yet more new shows at the event. The carrot-on-the-stick for potential ad-revenue will be this new subscription milestone.

Back in January this year, we reported on Hulu’s unveiling of its original programming line-up for the first half of 2012, with it launching on Hulu Plus as well as the (free) ad-supported section of its website (for which it now has a 55% larger screen).

As The Next Web’s Anna Heim wrote at the time:

“…original content could play a key role in boosting the ad-supported site of Hulu’s business. While Hulu Plus exceeded the company’s expectations in 2011, competing with Netflix and reaching 1.5 million paying subscribers, advertising revenues were lower than expected during the second half of the year.”

Hulu Plus ended 2011 with 1.5m subscribers, just over a year after its official launch, so to notch up an extra half-a-million subscribers in just a few months is good going for the online TV service.